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HIPAA Violations Add Up

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Final Rule provides patients with an abundance of rights with respect to confidential health information; however, it can also allow for disclosure of such information needed for patient care and other critical circumstances. This Final Rule provides safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of electronic protected health information (ePHI). However, conformance surrounding the privacy of sensitive data has been a common issue, as detailed by the breaches below:

Advocate Health Care Reports Second-Biggest HIPAA Breach
On July 15, 2013, Advocate Health Care reported that four unencrypted computers were stolen from an administrative building in Park Ridge, Illinois. Approximately 4 million patients were affected by this breach, since confidential data, which included, addresses, dates of birth, names and social security numbers, were accessible. Clinical data containing health insurance data, medical, diagnoses and record numbers were also contained on the computers. The Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Advocate Health Care stated that the computers were password-protected, but not encrypted. Additionally, the Advocate Health Care representative indicated that Advocate Health Care recently began sending letters to affected patients offering a full year of credit monitoring at no cost.

Affinity Health Plan To Pay HHS $1.2M Over Patient Data Breach
New-York-based Affinity Health Plan will pay the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) approximately $1.2 million as part of a patient data breach and violation of HIPAA. CBS Evening News purchased a photocopier previously leased by Affinity and determined confidential medical data was never removed from the hard drive. Approximately 344,579 patients may have been affected by the breach.

Idaho State University Settles HIPAA Security Case for $400,000
Idaho State University has agreed to pay $400,000 to the HHS OCR to settle alleged violations of the HIPPA final rule. This resulted from the breach of unsecured electronic protected health information of nearly 17,500 patients at ISU’s Pocatello Family Medicine Clinic. Specifically, the data was unsecured for at least 10 months, due to disabled firewall protection, exposing servers maintained by ISU.

It is very likely that the fines and penalties noted in the above examples far exceed the cost of compliance that was ignored in these cases. Organizations should take great care to ensure that the appropriate safeguards are met and controls are in place to protect their systems and data. Without such controls, it could only be a matter of time before your organization winds up the subject of a similar story.

If you have any questions or concerns about your organization’s compliance with the HIPAA final rule, please feel free to contact Eric Wright at 412-697-5328 or at ewright@schneiderdowns.com.

This advice is not intended or written to be used for, and it cannot be used for, the purpose of avoiding any federal tax penalties that may be imposed, or for promoting, marketing or recommending to another person, any tax related matter.

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